Arrhenius’s impossibility theorems purport to demonstrate that no population axiology can satisfy each of a small number of intuitively compelling adequacy conditions. However, it has recently been pointed out that each theorem depends on a dubious assumption: Finite Fine-Grainedness. This assumption states that there exists a finite sequence of slight welfare differences between any two welfare levels. Denying Finite Fine-Grainedness makes room for a lexical population axiology which satisfies all of the compelling adequacy (...) conditions in each theorem. Therefore, Arrhenius’s theorems fail to prove that there is no satisfactory population axiology. In this paper, I argue that Arrhenius’s theorems can be repurposed. Since all of our population-affecting actions have a non-zero probability of bringing about more than one distinct population, it is population prospect axiologies that are of practical relevance, and amended versions of Arrhenius’s theorems demonstrate that there is no satisfactory population prospect axiology. These impossibility theorems do not depend on Finite Fine-Grainedness, so lexical views do not escape them. (shrink)

Blindsight is a kind of residual vision found in people with lesions to V1. Subjects with blindsight typically report no visual awareness, but they are nonetheless able to make above-chance guesses about the shape, location, color and movement of visual stimuli presented to them in their blind field. A different kind of blindsight, sometimes called type 2 blindsight, is a kind of residual vision found in patients with V1 lesions in the presence of some residual awareness. Type 2 blindsight differs (...) from ordinary visual experience in lacking the particularity, transparency and fine-grainedness often taken to be essential to visual experience, at least in veridical cases. I argue that the case of type 2 blindsight provides a counterexample to the view that these characteristics are essential to veridical visual experience and that this gives us reason to resist the view that visual experience is essentially a perceptual relation to external objects. In the second part of the paper I argue that the case of type 2 blindsight yields important insights into the effects of attentional modulation on perceptual content and that cases of attentional modulation of appearance are not at odds with the view that the phenomenology of visual experience flows from its content. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss an abductive argument for the existence of God from the experience of awe at natural beauty. If God's creative work is a viable explanation for why we experience awe at natural beauty, and there is no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for the origins of such experiences, then we have defeasible evidence that God exists. To evaluate the argument's tenability, we assess the merits of the two main theocentric frameworks that can be marshaled to answer the question (...) of why human beings experience awe at natural beauty: (1) taking the experience of natural beauty as resulting from God's design intentions and (2) conceiving experiences of natural beauty as religious experiences in themselves. We argue that the presence of phenomenological content the fine-grainedness of which exceeds our descriptive and conceptual capacities is better accounted for by the latter hypothesis: experiencing natural beauty amounts to experiencing divine attributes. We conclude that the argument's theological premise is tenable and, having previously argued for the empirical premise (Porcher & De Luca-Noronha, 2021), we conclude that awe at natural beauty is best explained by the existence of God. (shrink)

This thesis consists of a series of papers in population ethics: a subfield of normative ethics concerned with the distinctive issues that arise in cases where our actions can affect the identities or number of people of who ever exist. Each paper can be read independently of the others. In Chapter 1, I present a dilemma for Archimedean views in population axiology: roughly, those views on which adding enough good lives to a population can make that population better than any (...) other. In Chapter 2, I extend Gustaf Arrhenius’s famous impossibility theorems in population axiology into the domain of choices under risk. My risky impossibility theorems dispense with the assumption that welfare levels are finitely fine-grained, and so tell against lexical views in population axiology. In Chapter 3, I present objections to critical-level and critical-range views in population axiology. I then sketch out what I call the ‘Imprecise Exchange Rates View’ and argue that it is an attractive alternative. In Chapter 4, I address critical-level and critical-range views again. This time, I note that they are vulnerable to objections from biographical identity: identity between lives. I suggest that these objections give us reason to reject critical-level and critical-range views and embrace the Total View. In Chapter 5, I argue that objections of the same form – objections from personal identity – tell against person-affecting views in population ethics. In Chapter 6, I draw out some counterintuitive implications of two recent complaints-based theories of the procreation asymmetry. (shrink)

We investigate a recently devised polyhedral semantics for intermediate logics, in which formulas are interpreted in n-dimensional polyhedra. An intermediate logic is polyhedrally complete if it is complete with respect to some class of polyhedra. The first main result of this paper is a necessary and sufficient condition for the polyhedral completeness of a logic. This condition, which we call the Nerve Criterion, is expressed in terms of Alexandrov’s notion of the nerve of a poset. It affords a purely combinatorial (...) characterisation of polyhedrally complete logics. Using the Nerve Criterion we show, easily, that there are continuum many intermediate logics that are not polyhedrally complete but which have the finite model property. We also provide, at considerable combinatorial labour, a countably infinite class of logics axiomatised by the Jankov–Fine formulas of ‘starlike trees’ all of which are polyhedrally complete. The polyhedral completeness theorem for these ‘starlike logics’ is the second main result of this paper. (shrink)

W. V. Quine famously defended two theses that have fallen rather dramatically out of fashion. The first is that intensions are “creatures of darkness” that ultimately have no place in respectable philosophical circles, owing primarily to their lack of rigorous identity conditions. However, although he was thoroughly familiar with Carnap’s foundational studies in what would become known as possible world semantics, it likely wouldn’t yet have been apparent to Quine that he was fighting a losing battle against intensions, due in (...) large measure to developments stemming from Carnap’s studies and culminating in the work of Kripke, Hintikka, and Bayart. These developments undermined Quine’s crusade against intensions on two fronts. First, in the context of possible world semantics, intensions could after all be given rigorous identity conditions by defining them (in the simplest case) as functions from worlds to appropriate extensions, a fact exploited to powerful and influential effect in logic and linguistics by the likes of Kaplan, Montague, Lewis, and Cresswell. Second, the rise of possible world semantics fueled a strong resurgence of metaphysics in contemporary analytic philosophy that saw properties and propositions widely, fruitfully, and unabashedly adopted as ontological primitives in their own right. This resurgence — happily, in my view — continues into the present day. -/- For a time, at any rate, Quine experienced somewhat better success with his second thesis: that higher-order logic is, at worst, confused and, at best, a quirky notational alternative to standard first-order logic. However, Quine notwithstanding, a great deal of recent work in formal metaphysics transpires in a higher-order logical framework in which properties and propositions fall into an infinite hierarchy of types of (at least) every finite order. Initially, the most philosophically compelling reason for embracing such a framework since Russell first proposed his simple theory of types was simply that it provides a relatively natural explanation of the paradoxes. However, since the seminal work of Prior there has been a growing trend to consider higher-order logic to be the most philosophically natural framework for metaphysical inquiry, many of the contributors to this volume being among the most important and influential advocates of this view. Indeed, this is now quite arguably the dominant view among formal metaphysicians. -/- In this paper, and against the current tide, I will argue in §1 that there are still good reasons to think that Quine’s second battle is not yet lost and that the correct framework for logic is first-order and type-free — properties and propositions, logically speaking, are just individuals among others in a single domain of quantification — and that it arises naturally out of our most basic logical and semantical intuitions. The data I will draw upon are not new and are well-known to contemporary higher-order metaphysicians. However, I will try to defend my thesis in what I believe is a novel way by suggesting that these basic intuitions ground a reasonable distinction between “pure” logic and non-logical theory, and that Russell-style semantic paradoxes of truth and exemplification arise only when we move beyond the purely logical and, hence, do not of themselves provide any strong objection to a type-free conception of properties and propositions. -/- Most of my arguments in §1 are largely independent of any specific account of the nature of properties and propositions beyond their type-freedom. However, I will in addition argue that there are good reasons to take propositions, at least, to be very fine-grained. My arguments are thus bolstered significantly if it can be shown that there are in fact well-defined examples of logics that are not only type-free but which comport with such a conception of propositions. It is the purpose of §2 to lay out a logic of this sort in some detail, drawing especially upon work by George Bealer and related work of my own. With the logic in place, it will be possible to generalize the line of argument noted above regarding Russell-style paradoxes and, in §3, apply it to two propositional paradoxes — the Prior-Kaplan paradox and the Russell-Myhill paradox — that are often taken to threaten the sort of account developed here. (shrink)

Theories of rational decision making often abstract away from computational and other resource limitations faced by real agents. An alternative approach known as resource rationality puts such matters front and center, grounding choice and decision in the rational use of finite resources. Anticipated by earlier work in economics and in computer science, this approach has recently seen rapid development and application in the cognitive sciences. Here, the theory of rationality plays a dual role, both as a framework for normative (...) assessment and as a source of scientific hypotheses about how mental processes in fact work. The latter project, often called rational analysis, depends for its success on a fine-grained characterization of the computational problem facing a decision maker, which may in turn depend on realistic assumptions about what the relevant agent is like. As a consequence, resource rationality involves a delicate, but often fruitful interplay between the normative and the descriptive. (shrink)

Cross-cultural dialogue between the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy and the classical pragmatist tradition in American philosophy can help educators to clarify aims for greater ecological responsiveness in moral education. This dialogue can contribute to meeting an urgent practical need to cultivate ecological imagination, and an equally practical need to make theoretical sense of the way in which ecological perception becomes relevant to moral deliberation. The first section of this chapter explores relational thinking in the Kyoto School and American (...) pragmatism to help develop, in the second section, a concept of ecological imagination. A fine-tuned ecological imagination is a capacity we already count on in our best environmental writers, educators, scientists, and policy analysts. Moral deliberation enlists imagination of a specifically ecological sort when the imaginative structures we use to understand ecosystemic relationships shape our mental simulations and what John Dewey calls our “dramatic rehearsals.” The final section draws from the foregoing to clarify some appropriate aims for contemporary moral education. Enriched through cross-cultural dialogue about the relational networks in which our finite lives are embedded, a finely aware ecological imagination can make the deliberations of the coming generation more trustworthy. (shrink)

El artículo realiza una aproximación a la controversia sobre la teleología (teoría de los fines) en la obra científica y filosófica de Karl Marx y Friedrich Engels. Equidistante de las interpretaciones marxistas y marxólogas que niegan la teleología como los que afirman la teleología bajo los postulados de la filosofía liberal, se defiende la noción de una teoría abierta de los fines de la historia y el fin de la historia en los autores. Primero, se introduce el problema sobre la (...) controversia de la teleología, sus contornos y entornos de la modernidad y su finitud. Segundo, se exponen los argumentos de los intérpretes del final cerrado y su lectura de las obras clásicas. Tercero, se contraargumenta defendiendo el final abierto y su sentido hermenéutico. Cuarto y último, se realiza una reflexión del sentido ontológico, epistemológico, metodológico y político del teleologismo en Marx y Engels e implicaciones de esta controversia en la filosofía de las ciencias sociales y la filosofía de la historia. (shrink)

I attempt to meet some criticisms that Williamson makes of my attempt to carry out Prior's project of reducing possibility discourse to actualist discourse.

This paper is concerned with the semantics for the logics of ground that derive from a slight variant GG of the logic of (Fine, 2012) that have already been developed in (deRosset and Fine, 2023). Our aim is to outline that semantics and to provide a comparison with two related semantics for ground, given in (Correia, 2017) and (Kraemer, 2018). This comparison highlights the strengths and difficulties of these different approaches.

In recent years, a growing discussion about how we should design our cities has emerged, particularly for the more controversial modes of design such as “defensive,” “hostile,” or “disciplinary” architecture (i.e., benches on which one cannot sleep, or metal studs on which one cannot skate). Although this debate is relatively mature, many studies have argued that these design notions are undertheorized and are, thus, challenging to study from an empirical and normative perspective. In this paper, I will defne the most (...) common terms used in the literature and show how they are interconnected by utilizing a set of “conditions of adequacy” from philosophy to facilitate a more transparent and well-grounded discussion of them. Terms such as “hostile” and “defensive” design are underlined by several diferent phenomena, not just one as is sometimes commonly assumed. I will also show that these phenomena and their conceptualizations require—and sometimes force us to use—diferent moral reasons when justifying the utilization of diferent designs. (shrink)

This paper establishes a sound and complete semantics for the impure logic of ground. Fine (Review of Symbolic Logic, 5(1), 1–25, 2012a) sets out a system for the pure logic of ground, one in which the formulas between which ground-theoretic claims hold have no internal logical complexity; and it provides a sound and complete semantics for the system. Fine (2012b) [§§6-8] sets out a system for an impure logic of ground, one that extends the rules of the original (...) pure system with rules for the truth-functional connectives, the first-order quantifiers, and λ-abstraction. However, no semantics has yet been provided for this system. The present paper partly fills this lacuna by providing a sound and complete semantics for a system GG containing the truth-functional operators that is closely related to the truth-functional part of the system of Fine (2012b). (shrink)

The theory of embodiment is used in providing an account of the identity of acts and in providing solutions to various puzzles concerning acts.

An exact truthmaker for A is a state which, as well as guaranteeing A’s truth, is wholly relevant to it. States with parts irrelevant to whether A is true do not count as exact truthmakers for A. Giving semantics in this way produces a very unusual consequence relation, on which conjunctions do not entail their conjuncts. This feature makes the resulting logic highly unusual. In this paper, we set out formal semantics for exact truthmaking and characterise the resulting notion of (...) entailment, showing that it is compact and decidable. We then investigate the effect of various restrictions on the semantics. We also formulate a sequent-style proof system for exact entailment and give soundness and completeness results. (shrink)

Our aim in this paper is to extend the semantics for the kind of logic of ground developed in (deRosset and Fine, 2023). In that paper, we very briefly suggested a way of treating universal and existential quantification over a fixed domain of objects. Here we explore some options for extending the treatment to allow for a variable domain of objects.

A significant strand of the ethical psychology, aesthetics and politics of Plato's Republic revolves around the concept of poikilia, ‘fascinating variety’. Plato uses the concept to caution against harmful appetitive pleasures purveyed by democracy and such artistic or cultural practices as mimetic poetry. His aim, this article shows, is to contest a prominent conceptual connection between poikilia and beauty (kallos, to kalon). Exploiting tensions in the archaic and classical Greek concept, Plato associates poikilia with dangerous pleasures to redirect admiration toward (...) a distinctly philosophical pursuit of the nature of beauty. This is to displace a prominent and problematic cultural sensibility—the aesthetics of poikilia—not to deny that fascinating variety, even in mimetic poetry, may be beautiful. Rather, Plato's cultural critique lays bare an epistemological problem in the ethical psychology of beauty: since they cannot be distinguished from what seems beautiful, how should one respond to fascinating yet dangerous attractions? (shrink)

According to a prominent narrative, the problem of recognition arises in the modern period in opposition to premodern notions of honor. This chapter invites us to reconsider this narrative by examining two views of honor in ancient Greek thought. I first show that Homeric honor includes contestable norms of reciprocal respect and esteem for individual virtue. I then show how Plato appropriates the Homeric view in his ethical psychology yet articulates a competing view of the nature and value of honor. (...) By showing that ancient Greek honor is more continuous with theories of recognition than has been appreciated, this chapter offers fresh perspectives on a central strand of ancient Greek ethics and its relevance to social and political thought. (shrink)

This series aims to bring together important recent writing in major areas of philosophical inquiry, selected from a variety of sources. The editor of each volume contributes an introductory essay on the items chosen and on the questions with which they deal. A selective bibliography is appended as a guide to further reading.

A crux of Plato’s Symposium is how beauty relates to the good. Diotima distinguishes beauty from the good, I show, to explain how erotic pursuits are characteristically ambivalent and opaque. Human beings pursue beauty without knowing why or thinking it good; yet they are rational, if aiming at happiness. Central to this reconstruction is a passage widely taken to show that beauty either coincides with the good or demands disinterested admiration. It shows rather that what one loves as beautiful does (...) not appear good, a proposal with ramifications for ethical psychology. (shrink)

This volume in the Oxford Readings in Philosophy looks at central areas in Plato's philosophy: ethics, politics, religion, and the soul. It includes essays on virtue, knowledge, and happiness; justice and happiness; pleasure; Platonic love; feminism; the ideally just state, democracy and totalitarianism; and the nature of the soul and moral motivation.

This chapter presents several of the dominant ideas and intellectual debates about human beauty from archaic Greece to early Christianity. At issue are ideals of character, ethical ideals of who one should be and how one should live. What constitutes beauty and why beauty matters change alongside conceptions of body and soul, virtue and happiness, and the relationship between human beings and the divine.

This paper pursues the philosophical significance of a relatively unexplored point of Platonic aesthetics: the social dimension of beauty. The social dimension of beauty resides in its conceptual connection to shame and honour. This dimension of beauty is fundamental to the aesthetic education of the Republic, as becoming virtuous for Plato presupposes a desire to appear and to be admired as beautiful. The ethical significance of beauty, shame, and honour redound to an ethically rich notion of appearing before others which (...) corresponds to a public conception of virtue. I suggest how this dimension of beauty in Plato – particularly the emphasis on beautification – proves fruitful for reconsidering the scope and the nature of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Although recent commentators have attended to dramatic and ironic aspects of Plato’s Republic, a more sustained examination of the relation between irony and the exchanges of Socrates and Glaucon is required because a crucial purpose and presentation of the irony have largely gone unnoticed. This paper argues that Socratesemploys irony in part to parody Glaucon’s extremism and that he does so to exhort Glaucon to think critically. First, it examines how Socrates uses the term makaria primarily ironically and pedagogically. Then, (...) a possible reason for this use of makaria is advanced: aspects of Kallipolis are a parody of Glaucon and that the parody aims to instruct Glaucon intellectually. This paper hopes to show that such a reading deserves further articulation and examination. (shrink)

Prior to Kripke’s seminal work on the semantics of modal logic, McKinsey offered an alternative interpretation of the necessity operator, inspired by the Bolzano–Tarski notion of logical truth. According to this interpretation, ‘it is necessary that A’ is true just in case every sentence with the same logical form as A is true. In our paper, we investigate this interpretation of the modal operator, resolving some technical questions, and relating it to the logical interpretation of modality and some views in (...) modal metaphysics. In particular, we present an hitherto unpublished solution to problems 41 and 42 from Friedman’s 102 problems, which uses a different method of proof from the solution presented in the paper of Tadeusz Prucnal. (shrink)

Review of the first comprehensive companion to the growing scholarship on ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics.

Abstract: Proponents of the this-universe objection to fine-tuning arguments for a multiverse claim that while the multiverse hypothesis raises the probability that some universe is fine-tuned for life, it fails to raise the probability that this one is. Because that is so, they further argue, those who take the fine-tuning of this universe as evidence for the multiverse hypothesis are guilty of a probabilistic fallacy. I argue that a proper evaluation of the this-universe objection requires the development (...) of a general, formal framework for reasoning probabilistically with evidence statements expressed using indexical terms (such as the statement This universe is fine-tuned). I proceed to develop such a framework and then to apply it to the this-universe objection. While my primary aim is to defend the this-universe objection from recent rebuttals, a secondary aim is to exhibit the utility of the framework itself, which has the potential for wider application. (shrink)

Fine (2005, 2006) has presented a ‘trilemma’ concerning the tense-realist idea that reality is constituted by tensed facts. According to Fine, there are only three ways out of the trilemma, consisting in what he takes to be the three main families of tense-realism: ‘presentism’, ‘(external) relativism’, and ‘fragmentalism’. Importantly, although Fine characterises tense-realism as the thesis that reality is constituted (at least in part) by tensed facts, he explicitly claims that tense realists are not committed to their (...) fundamental existence. Recently, Correia and Rosenkranz (2011, 2012) have claimed that Fine’s tripartite map of tense realism is incomplete as it misses a fourth position they call ‘dynamic absolutism’. In this paper, I will argue that dynamic absolutists are committed to the irreducible existence of tensed facts and that, for this reason, they face a similar trilemma concerning the notion of fact-content. I will thus conclude that a generalised version of Fine’s trilemma, concerning both fact-constitution and fact-content, is indeed inescapable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Kit Fine recently described and defended a novel position in the philosophy of time, fragmentalism. It is not often that a new option appears in this old field, and for that reason alone these two essays merit serious attention. I will try to present briefly but fairly some of the considerations that Fine thinks favour fragmentalism. I will also weigh the merits of fragmentalism against the view that Fine presents as its chief rival, relativism, as well (...) as the merits of both against the view that he calls anti-realism. Along the way, we should pick up a clearer picture of fragmentalism itself. (shrink)

In this paper I will present three arguments (based on the notions of constitution, metaphysical reality, and truth, respectively) with the aim of shedding some new light on the structure of Fine’s (2005, 2006) ‘McTaggartian’ arguments against the reality of tense. Along the way, I will also (i) draw a novel map of the main realist positions about tense, (ii) unearth a previously unnoticed but potentially interesting form of external relativism (which I will label ‘hyper-presentism’) and (iii) sketch a (...) novel interpretation of Fine’s fragmentalism (which I contrast with Lipman’s 2015, 2016b, forthcoming). (shrink)

According to the Fine-Tuning Argument, the existence of life in our universe confirms the Multiverse Hypothesis. A standard objection to FTA is that it violates the Requirement of Total Evidence. I argue that RTE should be rejected in favor of the Predesignation Requirement, according to which, in assessing the outcome of a probabilistic process, we should only use evidence characterizable in a manner available before observing the outcome. This produces the right verdicts in some simple cases in which RTE (...) leads us astray, and, when applied to FTA, it shows that our evidence does confirm HM. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose that, in addition to the multiverse hypothesis, which is commonly taken to be an alternative explanation for fine-tuning, other than the design hypothesis, the simulation hypothesis is another explanation for fine-tuning. I then argue that the simulation hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘designer’ and ‘supernatural designer of immense power and knowledge’ in much the same way that the multiverse hypothesis undercuts the alleged evidential connection between ‘fine-tuning’ and ‘fine-tuner’ (or (...) ‘designer’). If this is correct, then the fine-tuning argument is a weak argument for the existence of God. (shrink)

William James advocated a form of finite theism, motivated by epistemological and moral concerns with scholastic theism and pantheism. In this article, I elaborate James’s case for finite theism and his strategy for dealing with these concerns, which I dub the problems of suffering. I contend that James is at the very least implicitly aware that the problem of suffering is not so much one generic problem but a family of related problems. I argue that one of James’s (...) great contributions to philosophical theism is his advocacy for the view that adequate theistic philosophizing is not so much about cracking this family of problems, but finding a version of the problem to embrace. (shrink)

After a brief review of the golden ratio in history and our previous exposition of the fine-structure constant and equations with the exponential function, the fine-structure constant is studied in the context of other research calculating the fine-structure constant from the golden ratio geometry of the hydrogen atom. This research is extended and the fine-structure constant is then calculated in powers of the golden ratio to an accuracy consistent with the most recent publications. The mathematical constants (...) associated with the golden ratio are also involved in both the calculation of the fine-structure constant and the proton-electron mass ratio. These constants are included in symbolic geometry of historical relevance in the science of the ancients. (shrink)

The fine structure constant appears in several fields of physics and its value is experimentally obtained with a high accuracy. Its physical origin however is unsolved long-standing problem. Richard Feynman expressed the idea that it could be similar to the natural irrational numbers, pi, and e. Amongst the proposed theoretical expressions with values closer to the experimental one is the formula of I. Gorelik which is based on rotating dipole with two empirically suggested coefficients, while the physical origin is (...) unknown. BSM-Supergravitation Unified Theory suggests a physical mechanism defining the fine structure constant. The mathematical expression is based on a spatial precession mode of vibrations in a tetrahedron of spheres with specific properties. The value from the derived expression differs from the CODATA 98 value by 0.000008% only. The conclusion is that the fine structure constant is a natural irrational number. While the irrational number pi, is defined in a 2D space, the fine structure constant is related to a vibration property of a specific formation in 3D space. (shrink)

A central objection to McDowell’s conceptualism about empirical content concerns the fine-grained phenomenology of experience, which supposedly entails that the actual content of experience cannot be matched in its particularity by our concepts. While McDowell himself has answered this objection in recourse to the possibility of demonstrative concepts, his reply has engendered a plethora of further objections and is widely considered inadequate. I believe that McDowell’s critics underestimate the true force of his reply because they tend to read unrecognized (...) empiricist presuppositions into his account of experience. To show this, I introduce a new hylomorphic reading of McDowell’s account of experience and argue that the objections to his reply all rest on a specific empiricist assumption, which is untenable because it conflates the form of experience with its content. Consequently, conceptualism so understood can resist all of these objections, as I attempt to show by systematizing and answering them. (shrink)

It seems like a problem to say that love can be merited—its value is located in its transcendence of comparative judgments. However, we commonly make judgments about who is and is not worth loving. We deem certain romantic partners, friends, and family members as worth or not worth our loving time, attention, and effort. In this paper, I argue that love can be merited, and it is merited because of a person’s intrinsic valuable qualities. However, it is not the fact (...) that such qualities can be compared that is relevant. What is relevant is the fact that such qualities are gradable, and what it means for someone to merit love is that their qualities meet a threshold or standard of value for love. Moreover, love requires some amount of practical wisdom in discerning these thresholds and when someone meets or fails to meet them. This is important to recognize since we are creatures of finite love. We do not have the capacity to love everyone who is both worthy and unworthy of love. Given our finite capacities, I argue that making wise and discerning judgments about whom to love should be kept in mind when philosophizing about love. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel sceptical response to the fine-tuning argument for the existence of God (FTA). According to this response, even if FTA can establish, what I call, the confirmation proposition: ‘fine-tuning confirms the God hypothesis’, there is no reason to think that a strengthening of FTA can establish the evidence-favouring proposition: ‘fine-tuning favours the God hypothesis over its competitors’. My argument is that, any criteria for the explanation of fine-tuning that permit us to take (...) the God hypothesis seriously ought to make us sceptical that fine-tuning favours the God hypothesis over its competitors. As taking the God hypothesis seriously requires us to give a fair hearing to all sorts of non-theistic explanations, including the so-called weird sorts of atheism. (shrink)

This paper focuses on order-preserving logics defined from varieties of distributive lattices with negation, and in particular on the problem of whether these can be axiomatized by means Hilbert-style calculi that are finite. On the negative side, we provide a syntactic condition on the equational presentation of a variety that entails failure of finite axiomatizability for the corresponding logic. An application of this result is that the logic of all distributive lattices with negation is not finitely axiomatizable; we (...) likewise establish that the order-preserving logic of the variety of all Ockham algebras is also not finitely axiomatizable. On the positive side, we show that an arbitrary subvariety of semi-De Morgan algebras is axiomatized by a finite number of equations if and only if the corresponding order-preserving logic is axiomatized by a finite Hilbert-style calculus. This equivalence also holds for every subvariety of a Berman variety of Ockham algebras. We obtain, as a corollary, a new proof that the implication-free fragment of intuitionistic logic is finitely axiomatizable, as well as a new corresponding Hilbert-style calculus. Our proofs are constructive in that they allow us to effectively convert an equational presentation of a variety of algebras into a Hilbert-style calculus for the corresponding order-preserving logic, and vice versa. We also consider the assertional logics associated to the above-mentioned varieties, showing in particular that the assertional logics of finitely axiomatizable subvarieties of semi-De Morgan algebras are finitely axiomatizable as well. (shrink)

Perry Hendricks’ original impairment argument for the immorality of abortion is based on the impairment principle (TIP): if impairing an organism to some degree is immoral, then ceteris paribus, impairing it to a higher degree is also immoral. Since abortion impairs a fetus to a higher degree than fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and giving a fetus FAS is immoral, it follows that abortion is immoral. Critics have argued that the ceteris paribus is not met for FAS and abortion, and so (...) we proposed the Modified Impairment Principle (MIP) to avoid these difficulties. Dustin Crummett has responded, arguing that MIP is open to various counterexamples which show it to be false. He also shows that MIP can generate moral dilemmas. Here, we propose a modification to MIP that resolves the issues Crummett raises. Additionally, Alex Gillham has criticized our appropriation of Don Marquis’ ‘future like ours’ reasoning about the wrongness of impairment. We show that his objections have minimal implications for our argument. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that the fact that our universe is fine-tuned for life favors both a design hypothesis as well as a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis. The claim that the fine-tuning of this universe supports a non-teleological multiverse hypothesis has been forcefully challenged however by Ian Hacking and Roger White. In this paper we take this challenge even further by arguing that if it succeeds, then not only does the fine-tuning of this universe fail to support a (...) multiverse hypothesis, but it tends to favor a single-universe hypothesis instead. (shrink)

Recent existential-risk thinkers have noted that the analysis of the fine-tuning argument for God’s existence, and the analysis of certain forms of existential risk, employ similar types of reasoning. This paper argues that insofar as the “many worlds objection” undermines the inference to God’s existence from universal fine-tuning, then a similar many worlds objection undermines the inference that the historic risk of global nuclear catastrophe has been low from the lack of such a catastrophe has occurred in our (...) world. A version of the fine-tuning argument applied to nuclear risk, The Nuclear Fine-Tuning Argument, utilizes the set of nuclear close calls to show that 1) conventional explanations fail to adequately explain how we have survived thus far and 2) the existence of many worlds provides an adequate explanation. This is because, if there are many worlds, observers are disproportionately more likely to reflect upon a world that hasn’t had a global nuclear catastrophe than upon one that has had a global nuclear catastrophe. This selection bias results from the catastrophic nature of such an event. This argument extends generally to all global catastrophic risks that both A) have been historic threats and B) would result in a significantly lower global population. (shrink)

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A-theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B-theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A-theories, suggests more than coherent A-theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed (...) facts, but also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non-standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B-theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender. (shrink)

Do philosophers use intuitions? Should philosophers use intuitions? Can philosophical methods (where intuitions are concerned) be improved upon? In order to answer these questions we need to have some idea of how we should go about answering them. I defend a way of going about methodology of intuitions: a metamethodology. I claim the following: (i) we should approach methodological questions about intuitions with a thin conception of intuitions in mind; (ii) we should carve intuitions finely; and, (iii) we should carve (...) to a grain to which we are sensitive in our everyday philosophising. The reason is that, unless we do so, we don’t get what we want from philosophical methodology. I argue that what we want is information that will aid us in formulating practical advice concerning how to do philosophy responsibly/well/better. (shrink)

Kit Fine, the leading proponent of the metaphysical project of grounding theory, has offered a number of potentially devastating objections to truthmaker theory, the branch of metaphysics dedicated to exploring the ontological grounds for truths. In this paper I show what presuppositions about truthmaker theory Fine’s objections are based upon, and why they are false. I discuss four objections that Fine raises, and demonstrate how truthmaker theorists may respond to them. I then showcase the positive contribution that (...) truthmaker theory can make to metaphysics, including its ability to speak to a core metaphysical topic (the ontological grounds for truths) that Fine’s approach to grounding must ultimately remain silent on. I conclude by exploring what I take to be the best option when it comes to understanding how truthmaking and grounding fit together. (shrink)

The fine-structure constant, which determines the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, is briefly reviewed beginning with its introduction by Arnold Sommerfeld and also includes the interest of Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman and others. Sommerfeld was very much a Pythagorean and sometimes compared to Johannes Kepler. The archetypal Pythagorean triangle has long been known as a hiding place for the golden ratio. More recently, the quartic polynomial has also been found as a hiding place for the golden ratio. (...) The Kepler triangle, with its golden ratio proportions, is also a Pythagorean triangle. Combining classical harmonic proportions derived from Kepler’s triangle with quartic equations determine an approximate value for the fine-structure constant that is the same as that found in our previous work with the golden ratio geometry of the hydrogen atom. These results make further progress toward an understanding of the golden ratio as the basis for the fine-structure constant. (shrink)

Could God have created a better universe? Well, the fundamental scientific laws and parameters of the universe have to be within a certain miniscule range, for a life-sustaining universe to develop: the universe must be ‘Fine Tuned’. Therefore the ‘embryonic universe’ that came into existence with the ‘big bang’ had to be either exactly as it was or within a certain tiny range, for there to develop a life-sustaining universe. If it is better that there exist a life-sustaining universe (...) than not, then it was better that the embryonic universe was one of this small set of very similar embryonic universes than that it was not. Furthermore, there are no firm grounds for claiming that of this small set of very similar embryonic universes, there is one which would have developed into a universe better than ours. Therefore there are no firm grounds for claiming that God could have created a better universe than ours. (shrink)

The fundamental constants that are involved in the laws of physics which describe our universe are finely-tuned for life, in the sense that if some of the constants had slightly different values life could not exist. Some people hold that this provides evidence for the existence of God. I will present a probabilistic version of this fine-tuning argument which is stronger than all other versions in the literature. Nevertheless, I will show that one can have reasonable opinions such that (...) the fine-tuning argument doesn’t lead to an increase in one’s probability for the existence of God. (shrink)